Amy Bernays

Is It My Turn?, Painting, Acrylic on Other

2021

This is part of a series of work I do in duet with my children’s paintings. My process with painting is to ruminate on life. Childhood is both the present, and the ghosts; I see memories of my own childhood. I want to inhabit their strong imaginations, bursting into our experience. Blurring the line between real and imaginary. This is my little girl and her dragon. Her work is more about texture and form than his. Even though it is his subject, the feminine is throughout. I love being her mum...

Somehow it is easier to overpopulate a little painting and get away with it that in a big canvas. This little painting is crowded with life. The menagerie is my daughter’s depiction of her world, the animals within it. It is blued together with the depiction of a small crowd of children looking at the precious thing. We can half make out their forms. Still a little undefined, as things are when you are only half grown up. I like to paint the happy in life. Looking for those thoughts or moments that bring me joy and define my life. I paint my children. Not just their visage, but their being. Their play, their imaginative world as well as their real world. In this series I have the kids paint...

both a noun for power, force, strength. And the past of May. This is a pair with a similar painting of his sister. This painting comes hot on the heals of a painting I did and quick...

I love to wonder as deeply as they do in play. The world comes alive with the possibilities that you put out there. In my children’s play, one will announce a reality; “we are fl...

A contemporary oil painting on linen by American artist A.J. Fries. Artist’s Statement: These works are an extension of a small series of realistic paintings that I did of graves...

Oil on wood panel